Working Title, the British company behind Bridget Jones, Love Actually and The Theory of Everything, is opening a new school in north London in an attempt to improve diversity in the film industry.

The Working Title School, which will be for 16- to 19-year-olds, was granted planning permission last week.

Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, the co-chairs of Working Title, intend to convert a former office block in Highbury into a school for about 1,000 pupils to teach film production alongside the national curriculum.

The school, which is scheduled to open in 2019 at the earliest, will seek to attract teenagers from a range of backgrounds.

Bevan and Fellner have both questioned the lack of diversity in the film industry in the past. “We go to film production studios and they are not diverse. That is not right. We realised we had to go back and start at the education level,” Bevan said of the project.

Fellner added: “We want to ensure we get an absolutely diverse set of students from diverse backgrounds into the industry. We don’t have a quick fix, but we want to help them realise the opportunities in the hope their voices will multiply.”

Bevan was born in New Zealand before moving to the UK, while Fellner attended Cranleigh school in Surrey before attending the Guildhall school of music and drama.

The regulator has also said it will do more to monitor the diversity of social class in media and will ask companies for information on the geographic and educational backgrounds of staff.

The BBC is trying to counter concerns that it is “too posh” by removing university degrees and school education from the CVs of potential new recruits. Internal research by the BBC found that 61% of its employees had parents who were in or had been in higher managerial positions or professional occupations – double the national average. This measure is considered an accurate reflection of whether people are from a privileged background.

Bevan and Fellner have led Working Title since 1992 and developed it into Britain’s most successful film production company. Last year the box office success of Bridget Jones’s Baby meant Working Title became the first British company to make $1bn (£758m) at the domestic box office.

As well as Bridget Jones, its other successes include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Atonement.

The Working Title School is a joint venture between Working Title and the Meller Educational Trust, which already runs academies.

The school will include a film studio based on those at Pinewood. Its courses will range from scriptwriting to hair and makeup, as well as lighting and post-production.

The project has attracted some local opposition in north London. Parents and teachers at existing schools in the area initially described the plans for Working Title School – which at one stage wanted to take pupils from ages 11 to 18 – as “extremely foolish”.